Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-01-22
A NOBLE SPEECH.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW
ENGLAND SOCIETY.
Beauty-What Those of the
New South Hold.

England Society, H. W. Grady, of the At
toast, 1.-THE New South" From extracts
here and there published of that speech,
we are enabled to present the following
parts of remarkable address that has
commanded the attention of the people of
the nation:
WHAT THE NEW SOUTH MEANS.
In speaking to the toast with which you
have honored me accept the term. The
New South as in no sense disparaging to
the Old. Dear to me, sir, is the home Of
nv childhood and the traditions of my
people. There is New South. not through
protest against the Old, but because of new
conditions, new adjustments, and, if you
please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to
this that address myself. l ask you, gen.
tlemen, to picture if you can the footsore
soldier, who, buttoning up in his faded
gray Jacket the parole which was taken
testimony to his children of his fidelity and
faith, turned his face homeward from APP
Ipomatox in April, 1865. Think of him as
ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, en-
feebled by want and wounds, hav-
ing fought to exhaustion. he sur
renders his gun, wrings the hands of
his comrades and lifting his tear-stained
and pallid face for the last time to the
graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls
his gray cap over his brow and begins the
slow and painful journey. What does he
find-let me ask you, who went to your
homes eager TO find all the welcome you
had justly earned, full payment for your
four years sacri6ce-what does he find
when he reaches the home he left four
years before? He finds his home in ruins,
his farm devastated, his slaves freed his
stock killed, his barns empty, his trade de-
stroyed, his money worthless, his social
system, feudal in its magnifcence, swept
away, his people without law or legal
status, his comrades slain, and their bur
deDs of others heavy on his shoulders,
crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone.
Without money, credit. employment, ma
terial or training-and, besides all this,
confronted with the gravest problems that
fishing of status for the vast body of his
liberated slaves.
What does he do-this hero in gray with
heart of gold-does he sit down in sullen-
ness and despair? Not for day Surely
God, who bad seourged him in his pros
perity, inspired him in his adversely As
ruin was never before so overwhelming,
never was restoration swifter. The soldier
stepped from the trenches into the furrow;
horses that had charged Federal guns
marched before the pillow, and fields that
run red with human blood in April We're
green with the harvest in June; women
reared in luxury cut up their dresses and
made breeches for their husbands, and with
patience and heroism that fits women al
ways as garment, gave their hands to
work. There was little bitterness in all
this. Cheerfllness and frankness pre-
vailed. bill Arp" struck the keynote
when he said Well, killed as many of
them as they did of me, and now am 60
ing to work :" or the soldier, returning
home after defeat and roasting some corn
on the roadside, who made the remark to
mis- comrades: You may leave the South,
if you want to, but am going to Sander
vile, kiss my wife, and raise q crop, and if
the Yankees fool with me any more | will
whip EN- again" | want to say to General
-Sherman-who is considered an able man
in our parts, though some people think he
Is kind of careless man about fira-that
from the ashes left US in 1864 we have raised
brave and beautiful city that somehow
or other we have caught the sunshine in
the bricks and mortar of our homes, and
have builded therein not one single ignoble
prejudice or memory.
THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.
But what is the sum of our work? We
have found out that in the general sum-
ming up the free negro counts more
than he did as slave. We have planted
the school house on the hill top, and made
it free to white and black. We have sowed
towns and cities in the place Of theories,
and put business above politics. We have
challenged your spinners in Massachusetts
and your iron-makers IN PENNSYLVANIA.
We have learned that the 100000 900 an
nuafly received from our cotton crop will
make US rich when the supplies that make
it are home-raised. We have reduced the
commercial rate of interest from "a to 6
per cent. and are floating 1 per cent
bonds. We have learned that one Northern
immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and
have smoothed the path to the southwark,
wiped out the place where Mason and
Dixon's line used to be, and hung our
latchstring out to you and yours. We
have reached the point that marks perfect
harmony in every household, when the
husband confesses that the pies which his
own wife cooks are as good as those his
mother used 10 bake; and we admit
that the sun shines as brightly and the
moon as softly as it did before the war;
We have fallen in love with work. We
have restored comfort to homes from which
culture and elegance never departed. We
nave let econon take root and spread
among us as rank as the crab-grass which
sprung from Shernan's cavalry camps,
until we are ready to lay odds on the
Georgia Yankee as he squeezes pure olive
oil out of his cotton-seed against any Down
Easter that ever snapped wooden nutmegs
for flannel sausages in the valleys of Yer
mont Above all, we know that we have
achieved in these piping times of
peace fuller independence for the South
than that which our forefathers sought to
win in the forum by their eloquence, or
compel on the field by their swords.
APosTRoPHE TO LINCOLN.
But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost
IN the storm of their first revolution. and
the American citizen, supplanting both and
stronger than either, took possession of the
republic bought by their common blood
and fashioned in wisdom and charged
himself with teaching men free govern
ment, and establishing the voice of the
people as the voice of God. [Applausel.
Great types, like valuable plants, are slow
to flower and fruit. But from the union
of these cOlonlStS, from the Strengthening
of their purposes and the crossing of their
blood. slow perfecting through a century,
came he who stands as the first typical
American-the first who comprehended
within himself all the strength and great
ness, all the majesty and grace of the re-
public-Abraham Lincoln. Loud and
long continued applausel. He was
the sum of Puritan and Cavalier,
for in his ardent nature there were
fused the virtues of both, and in the
depths of his great soul the faults of both
we're lost. Renewed applause He was
greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier,
IN that he was American renewed APP
plausel, and that in his homely form were
tirst gathered the vast and thrilling forces
of this ideal government-charging it with
such tremendous meaning, and so elevating
it above human suffering that martyrdom,
though UNANIMOUSLY aimed, came as fitting
crown to a life consecrated from its cradle
L 4. 4